


Serendipity: The Midnight Sun

by Scheherezade06



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:47:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24293845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scheherezade06/pseuds/Scheherezade06
Summary: An "epic" fantasy set in a magical world where practitioners either perform their spells during the light of day or only in the dark of night. Once every generation or so, a child is born who can perform day magic at night and night magic during the day. This person, called the "Midnight Sun," acts as a harbinger that the structures that allow magic to function properly need to be reset. And only the Midnight Sun can reset them. The current Midnight Sun, a young woman named Serendipity, must undertake a quest to preserve the forces of magic in her world. She encounters allies and enemies along her way, as well as love interests, challenges, and unique opportunities. Will Seren complete the ritual to reset magic and keep her world running smoothly? Or will her failure cast the world into chaos as the forces of magic spin free from their bindings?Themes: adventure, coming of age, romance, equality, duty, female protagonist, teenage protagonist, first person narrative





	Serendipity: The Midnight Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for taking a chance on a piece of original fiction. I hope you enjoy it!

I’m not usually awake after Fourth Corner. Most Dawncallers retire in the hours between Sunset and Fourth or between Fourth and Midnight. Only Nightbringers work between Fourth Corner and midnight and between midnight and First Corner. Just like only Dawncallers work between Second and Noon and Noon and Third Corner. Thus the day is divided. I wake every morning in time to join the lilting voices of the First Corner shift Dawncallers singing up the sun, and my workday ends when the Nightbringer chants ring out as the sun sets in the west. As days grow longer or shorter during the year, corners become closer together or farther apart, but the rhythm of the day stays the same. It’s peaceful.

Cascade takes after Mother and Father. He’s showing signs of being a Nightbringer. He asked me to go with him to the midnight testing, and I agreed wholeheartedly. I love my brother. I had always hoped he’d be a Dawncaller like me, but no one chooses their alignment. And Nightbringers are just as vital to the village as Dawncallers are.

“Seren!” my brother said in a chastising tone.

It amused me to hear Cascade scold me. Usually I am the one doing the scolding. But I sensed his agitation and bit off the yawn I’d been making before he hissed my name.

“Sorry, little brother,” I whispered, leaning down to speak into his ear. “You know I don’t usually stay up this late.”

“You didn’t have to come,” he said petulantly, feigning ambivalence that simply didn’t carry since he’d begged me to come with him. “Go home if you’re so tired.”

“And miss the chance to watch you embarrass yourself?” I teased. “Not hardly.”

Cascade scowled at me and then crossed his arms over his chest. He looked ridiculous in the pose, still short as he was at twelve years of age and dressed in rumpled clothes that didn’t fit him properly. Mother had laid out a fine outfit for him, but he’d insisted at the last minute on wearing one of father’s old shirts. My brother wanted so much to be grown. I sighed quietly and wistfully thought back to when I myself had been so foolish. It hadn’t been long ago, just a handful of years. But I’d grown up much when I joined the Dawncallers. Just as Cascade would mature with the Nightbringers.

“I won’t embarrass myself,” Cascade muttered after a moment, making me smirk to myself.

“Of course not,” said Mother, ruffling his hair and making him whine and turn red. “And if you did, it probably wouldn’t be as bad as what Serendipity did at her testing.”

My brother stopped frantically trying to un-muss his hair and looked up at me with squinty appraisal. My eyes were wide with shocked indignation over Mother’s declaration.

“What did Seren do?” Cascade asked Mother while looking at me.

“Nothing!” I said immediately, feeling a tingle of warmth trickling into my cheeks.

“She pulled the flames so hard, she knocked the brazier off the table,” Mother said, looking between me and Cascade fondly.

“Really?” Cascade asked with wide eyes. He grinned at me with a mix of awe and vindictive delight.

I gave no answer. I couldn’t contradict the story, but I didn’t need to add anything Mother had left out, either.

“She did,” Mother said with a nod. Then she crouched down to meet her son’s eyes at his level. “But we don’t pull the flames, Cade. Dawncallers pull, Ni—”

“Nightbringers push,” Cascade said, speaking over Mother. “I know, I know. Seren had to put out the fire. I have to make it bigger.”

“Exactly,” Mother said, nodding again. She patted Cascade’s cheek. “Exactly.”

“Cascade Waters!” called the Nightbringer Prime in her clear, authoritative voice. “Stand ready.”

I swear I heard my brother gulp. Then he took a deep breath, smoothed his too-big clothes, and stepped forward.

The loose ring of Nightbringer students parted to let my brother through to the dais. I recognized a few faces among the young men and women. They were all around my age, so I’d had lessons with most of them when we were children. The nearest two nodded at Cascade as they stepped aside, sizing up my brother as their new potential brother.

I held my breath as I watched Cascade ascend the short set of steps up to the dais. Then he approached the Nightbringer Prime who stood on the other side of the low table that took up the center of the platform. A single brazier on the table cast flickering light across the Prime’s pale, stoic face and her neatly pulled back raven hair.

From where I stood, I could just see the curve of my brother’s nose and cheek, but mostly I saw his back and his still-mussed hair. So I watched the Prime as she watched my brother. Her dark lips moved, but I had no idea what she said. My brother nodded several times before he squared his shoulders and extended one arm out, palm down over the brazier.

At first, nothing happened. The fire in the brazier continued to flicker ambivalently as my brother’s shoulders grew tighter and tighter. The Prime coaxed him quietly, but nothing seemed to change. The assembled crowd began to murmur. I knew what they were wondering: was Cascade talentless? There were a handful of talentless people in the village. People who never developed an affinity for day or night magic. It was rare for the child of two people who could use magic to not develop a talent, but it wasn’t unheard of. Just like it had been fairly rare for me to become a Dawncaller when both of my parents were Nightbringers. But I wasn’t the only one the village who didn’t follow her parents’ path. These things happened. Still, I knew my brother would be devastated if he never became a Nightbringer or a Dawncaller.

I found my chest growing tight as the moment of anticipation grew longer, and I forced myself to release the breath I’d been holding. With fresh air in my lungs, I pressed my lips together and stopped breathing again as I waited and watched and willed the fire to grow larger.

And then the fates granted my wish with mocking glee.

The brazier exploded.

The crowd gasped, and then several people shouted or screamed as glowing embers and shards of twisted metal shot out in all directions. I watched in horror as scattered dots of light grew into flames that lapped at skirts and coats or started catching the wooden platform where Cascade had just fallen to his knees.

I clumsily dashed forward, my balance precarious and my gaze locked on my brother as he clutched his stomach and then looked at his wet, red hands. He looked up as I shoved unsteadily between Nightbringers to make my way to the dais. Mother was a half step behind me. Cascade’s face was as white as fresh snow.

“Mother?” he said, his voice almost lost in the chaos around us.

“Cade,” Mother choked out as she hesitated, unsure if touching him would make things worse. She glanced at me with panic in her eyes.

“Seren?” my brother called, his eyes looking glazed.

“I’m here,” I said, laying my hand over his as my stomach writhed.

Blood seeped from between his fingers to stain mine. The sight made me feel dizzy.

I knew enough of emergency aid and healing magic to know that Cascade needed immediate care, probably more than a Nightbringer medic could offer. Nightbringer magic was ill-suited to healing, so their medics focused on non-magical intervention. Judging by the amount of blood Cascade had already lost, I wasn’t sure if non-magical aid could keep him alive until sunrise, when a Dawncaller healer could intervene.

My brother was dying, and there was nothing I could do. Dawncalling was impossible at midnight. I knew that. But futile as it was, I had to try.

I closed my eyes and began softly singing the melody of restoration, willing Cascade’s flesh to knit back together. I felt the familiar pull of magic, the warmth that spread through my body, but I also felt a strange weight in my chest and the pit of my stomach, like I had just changed direction while swinging on a rope hanging from a tree limb.

I also felt the resonance in Cascade’s skin as my incantation took hold.

It was impossible, but I was weaving a spell from sunshine in the middle of the night.

I heard Mother gasp. She wasn’t the only one who did so, but she was the only one I could identify by the sound.

When I opened my eyes, I found several people staring at me in open shock. Around the dais, people were still scrambling to tend to the licking flames and other injuries from the exploded pot. But on the wooden platform, I sat surrounded by Nightbringers who were more interested in me and the gold light pouring out from between my hands.

“Serendipity Waters,” said the Nightbringer Prime in an awed voice. “You’re the Midnight Sun.”


End file.
